Saturday, July 28, 2012

Climbers Old, not so old and not so young

This week I met, after several years, one
of my best climbing buddies, the infamous Jim Lowther along with another friend
Jim Fotheringham – the legendary British climber. While JF is a dentist by
profession and all of 60 years specializing in curing snoring besides making
first ascents around the globe, JL is of my age (47 – 48) and claims to be a
poor farmer in the Lakes UK, never mind the fact that his peerage belongs to
the Earls of Lonsdale that once upon a time were perhaps the largest landowners
in UK, while as you all know I do nothing and claim to be doing nothing either
and let someone prove that I do of anything worth mentioning! We had another
member to this informal (over the beer glasses and huge plates of burgers)
meeting all of 44 and a reborn alpinist from US, Eric, who was a champion
mountain biker and took up climbing few years ago. I never thought of asking
how he justifies his existence on planet earth otherwise, so his profession and
occupation remains as of now a bit obscure and mysterious. Between us four we
had more than 100 years of climbing and adventuring, covering all the
continents and nearly every mountain ranges known to man.

We met at a supposedly 4 star hotel in
Delhi, when Delhi is reeling under heat stroke and these three had just landed
back the same morning from a stupendous expedition in Zanskar. So they were
super acclimatized (for whatever they felt like doing), super hungry and
thirsty (for whatever lay within reach and pocket) while I was super dazed and
fatigued and dehydrated and itching to get out and get back to the high
Himalayan peaks.

No sooner had we taken a 4 seated table
inside the coffee shop, JF announced it was too chilly and noisy indoors so
let’s get outside; outside! I screamed dubiously in my mind, but he being the
guest and I being the true Indian accepted his dictum wordless, moreover, JF is
not to be messed with even if you are not strapped to his patient’s chair with
him hovering atop your gaping mouth with one of those instruments of pleasure.
So we go out and sit beneath an umbrella. And then as the drinks and food came
and went started our jabbering, typically mountain jabbering that includes
everything from one’s dubiousness at one’s sanity to one’s marriage, family,
food and always leads to the future plans of unclimbed routes and then to all
the accidents or whippers one has undergone. Then comes the display of broken
bones mended indifferently or differently, stitches still raw, bruises and cuts
open and red, talks of those frozen moments of fear and exhilaration, how many
near death experiences one has had, how many avalanches has one been buried
into, and mind you all such morbid talks delivered in full mirth and jocular
temperament. Observed from afar it would seem as if we were planning our next
all-expense paid holiday to Hawaii with Ms World aspirants in tow.

We had so much fun through those three
hours and at the end when I headed back home, hanging like a bat from the upper
rail of the metro I thought back to the meeting and pondered what had I learnt
from it, if anything at all besides the super duper time we all shared. And
then as I recalled the phrases we used, punching each other in our slightly
bulging bellies and making fun of our receding and greying hairlines I realized
that as the years passed us by and we were still behaving like teen kids that
we were when we commenced our respective climbing careers we had somehow
transformed within. And these are some of the things that emerged...

We no longer conquered peaks, just visited
them...

We no longer talked about the true summit,
but our own personal summit...

We no longer felt fearless and ready to
rule the world, but we had each befriended fear and death to a degree tolerable
and had learned to live with either...

We still had impossible goals and summits
in our eyes, but now we had the vision to know that some of them must always
remain impossible...

We no longer bragged about our climbs and
laughed at horizontally inclined creatures, but we pine for the days when we
can join them too...

We don’t forget about our families or
friends, but we actually go shopping for them at the end of an expedition, which
only adds to the excess baggage already cowering under all metal...

We don’t stink as much after an expedition,
but we essentially take a shower and have the decency to shave and get a proper
haircut along with generous dabbling of body deodorant, etc...

We don’t scream at everyone we meet that
what an awesome climb we had just done, but we quietly tell them that we are
simply enjoying life while we still have it...

We don’t eat like drought victims post
expedition, but we carefully nimble through salads and other calorie-less
diets...

We do lose weight in a climb, yet the bulge
around the waist look ominous...

Our laughter is no longer reckless though
our hearts and spirit remain so as much...

And we still said while parting; not ‘see
you soon’ but ‘see you on top’...

And like we always say, old climbers are
rare since most die when young and those who grow old never die they simply
fall and crash out... Amen

About Me

As a child, i had three wishes: to be a submariner (i did), to be a published author (i did, but won't rest till the Nobel and Booker rest on my mantle) and to be a mountaineer (still trying to fulfill this one).I am otherwise a globe trotting thrill seeker and have climbed the seven summits and skied to both the poles and then some.

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BLOG FOR CLIMBING AND IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS

There is a drama and beauty to be found in the world’s most hard to reach places that far exceed the intensity we experience in our normal everyday lives. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from the fact that this pure happiness is usually only achieved after suffering some great hardships. In this mechanistic modern world, our primordial instincts for survival are often left untested, driving us to seek out those places where life is still hard.